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CHURCH OF THE THOUSAND GODS
Also called the Church of the Thousand Faiths. After the end of the war against Sukebe, the reduced populations of the earth mingled and slowly abandoned their old cultures. It was natural that this would lead to religious transitions as well. As old ways were gradually left behind, religion underwent a transformation as well. Many old religious myths and tales intermingled as people traveled about, and slowly, they began to form one large conglomerate of faith. Although it was not named as the Church of the Thousand Gods until after 100 AS, it was essentially that decades before. The Church remains popular everywhere today, since it is large and diverse enough that it can be almost anything for anyone. The Church has a large and quite complex belief system, listing hundreds of gods (the actual number of gods in the faith is over a thousand, but the name remains popular) along with even larger numbers of other mystical creatures in the various divine realms (indeed, in absorbing the old religion of the eastern Edo area, over eight million lesser spirits were added!), and myths relating to the many, many gods, demons, celestial creatures, etc, to say nothing of how all these beings relate to each other and to the mortal world. However, only a small number of hardcore theologists actually keep all this recorded. Most people just view the divinities worshipped by the Church as a large, collective, faceless whole. Local churches may revere from one to several gods above a few others, with a couple services to all the gods as a whole and the bulk of their attention upon their chosen few. It is worth noting that both celestial and infernal pokegirls support the cosmology put forth by the Church, which only helps to give it credence, although critics say that those pokegirls support the Church simply because their human masters convinced them to, and not out of any sense of correctness. The Church is a slightly liberal organization, placing emphasis on this life, not the next. It also puts great importance on love and happiness, and recently began to sanction marriages between humans and pokewomen in the more liberal leagues, and even some conservative ones. In many leagues, branches of the Church were funded by the league government, and this allowed them to influence the Church to emphasize aspects of the religion that each league found to be more pleasing than others. This went on for decades, and seemed to be leading the Church towards splintering, until recently one man made it his mission to prevent such schisms from occurring. Ricardo Esprina, a long-retired Tamer, set up his own branch of the Church in the Crimson League, and declared himself the Hierophant, the highest mortal in the faith, over ten years ago. He's had remarkable success, and has since managed to get all but a few churches in all the leagues to refuse funds from the league, instead relying on public support. Though many local churches were crippled by this, Esprina has declared it to be a major religious victory. He is now trying to slowly marshall more authority in both himself and the Church as a whole, and is playing it relatively low- key until a time when he feels the Church is stronger as an institution. Being encouraged by how well the more liberal leagues are adapting to human-pokewomon marriages, he recently came out and declared that the Church was against pokegirl cloning research, urging people and, where socially acceptable, pokegirls, to protest this. He watches and waits to see how this test of the Church's might turns out. Category:Continuum-76157982